It’s that time of the year when we find out who the World’s richest man is. Last year Warren Buffet was on top but how things can change in one bad year. Here’s the top five for your reading enjoyment, you can check the full list at Forbes.com.

1. Bill Gates retakes first place with a net worth of $40 billion dollars. That is $18 billion down from last year.
2. Warren Buffet takes second place with $37 billion dollars. That is $25 billion down from last year.
3. Carlos Slim Helu takes third place with $35 billion dollars. That is $25 billion down from last year.
4. Lawrence Ellison takes the fourth spot with $22.5 billion dollars which isn’t that bad if you ask me.
5. Ingvar Kamprad founder of Ikea takes the fifth spot with only $22 billion dollars.

I was going to make the list again this year but somehow those reporters didn’t get to me in time for the story, go figure. It seems that most everybody lost money last year, even billionaires.

It’ that time of the year when I reveal how much I saved for the last six months of 2008. I am not a rich guy by all means so I have to save, save, save as much as I can. I save $50 dollars from each paycheck I get doing that I managed to save $1,100. Here is the breakdown, $650 from my paychecks, $250 from my last paycheck when I was on my 9 day week and didn’t spend that much, and $200 from all those coins in my Coin Counting Jar. This time around I know exactly what I am going to do with it. Things being the way they are at the moment I am going to put it in the bank and maybe transfer some of that into my ING account. The $1,100 I saved for the last six months of 2008 is less than the $1,400 I saved the last six months of 2007 but I will take it anyway.

I’ve said it before and I am going to say it again, I am a sucker for these types of reports and this one sure got my attention real fast. The article at Forbes.com lists the 10 most valuable teams in sports. I know that you are busy and can’t wait for the weekend so I have a list of the top five for your reading enjoyment, if you want to read the full list just head on over to Forbes.com. Manchester United from the English Premier League sits atop the list, apparently the owner paid just $1.45 billion back in 2005, not a bad return on investment if you ask me. I was going to buy the team myself at the time but was short a couple of dollars, just a couple.

Well since 2008 is over and done with I decided to finally do something about all those coins in my Coin Counting Jar. At the end of December that jar said that I had $265.31 which isn’t that bad for two years of saving coins. Well I decide to send my brother to the Coinstar machine last Saturday and just get it over with. To make things interesting I decided to have a contest, try to guess how much money is there in the jar before Coinstar gets their cut and whoever comes closest gets $20 big ones. My brother took the jar and the final amount was $276 dollars, I don’t remember how many cents, and the winner was my nephew with his $280 dollar guess. I thought that the final amount would be close to $300 dollars because the jar didn’t count some coins but obviously it wasn’t. When my brother returned I handed over the prize to the lucky winner, who didn’t want to participate in the contest at first, we got some Taco Bell and the $200 left are going straight to my bank. I took pictures of the jar and the receipt and when my blog editor starts to work I will update this post.

I was surfing the net yesterday and I ran into an article about the best selling cars for the first nine months of this year. I am a sucker for those types of reports and I happen to own shares of Ford so I just had to check it. I don’t have a car myself but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want one, it’s so sad being poor. That is why I am working as hard as I can because I don’t want to be poor forever. Anyway, here is the list for the top 10 best sellers in the US for the first nine months. For the record, the price of my 10 shares of Ford (F) as I write this is $2.17 per share and worth $21.70 and that just the way it is.